Richard Powers | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Powers reading in April 2018 | |
| Born | (1957-06-18)June 18, 1957 (age 68) Evanston, Illinois, U.S. |
| Occupation | Writer, professor of English |
| Education | University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (BA,MA) |
| Period | 1985–present (as writer) |
| Genre | Literary novels |
| Parents | Richard Franklin Powers and Donna (Belik) Powers |
| Website | |
| www | |
Richard Powers (born June 18, 1957) is an Americannovelist whose works explore the effects of modern science and technology. His novelThe Echo Maker won the 2006National Book Award for Fiction.[1][2] He has also won many other awards over the course of his career, including aMacArthur Fellowship. As of 2024, Powers has published fourteen novels and has taught at theUniversity of Illinois andStanford University. He won the 2019Pulitzer Prize for Fiction forThe Overstory.
One of five children, Powers was born inEvanston, Illinois, the son of Richard Franklin Powers and his wife Donna Powers (née Belik).[3] His family later moved a few miles west toLincolnwood, where his father was a local schoolprincipal. When Powers was 11, they moved toBangkok,Thailand, where his father had accepted a position atInternational School Bangkok. Powers attended this through his freshman year, ending in 1972. During that time outside the U.S., he developed skills in vocal music and proficiency in cello, guitar, saxophone, and clarinet. He also became an avid reader, enjoying nonfiction primarily and classics such as theIliad and theOdyssey.
The family returned to the U.S. when Powers was 16. Following graduation in 1975 fromDeKalb High School inDeKalb, Illinois, he enrolled at theUniversity of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign (UIUC) with amajor inphysics, which he switched toEnglish literature during his first semester. He earned a BA in 1978 and anMA in Literature in 1980.
In 2010 and 2013, Powers was a Stein Visiting Writer at Stanford University, during which time he partly assisted in the lab of biochemist Aaron Straight.[4][5]
Powers was named aMacArthur Fellow in 1989. He received a Lannan Literary Award in 1999.
Powers was appointed the Swanlund Professor of English atUIUC in 1996; he is now an emeritus professor.[6]
On August 22, 2013, Stanford University announced that Powers had been named the Phil and Penny Knight Professor of Creative Writing in the Department of English.[7]
Powers learnedcomputer programming at Illinois as a user ofPLATO and moved to Boston to work as a programmer. One Saturday in 1980, Powers saw the 1914 photograph "Young Farmers" byAugust Sander at theMuseum of Fine Arts, Boston. He was so inspired that he quit his job two days later to write a novel about the people in the photograph.[8]
Powers worked for two years on his debut novel,Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance, which was published byWilliam Morrow in 1985. It comprises three alternating threads: a novella featuring the three young men in the photo duringWorld War I, a technology magazine editor who is obsessed with the photo, and the author's critical and historical musings about the mechanics of photography and the life ofHenry Ford. It was aNational Book Critics Circle Award finalist,[9] and received the Rosenthal Award from theAmerican Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.[10] It also received a Special Citation from thePEN/Hemingway Awards.[11]
Powers moved to the Netherlands, where he wrotePrisoner's Dilemma aboutThe Walt Disney Company and nuclear warfare.
He followed withThe Gold Bug Variations about genetics, music, and computer science. It was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist.[12]
In 1993, Powers wroteOperation Wandering Soul about, among other things, a genetic condition that causes accelerated aging, and an agonized young surgical trainee. It was a finalist for theNational Book Award.[13][2]
In 1995, Powers published thePygmalion storyGalatea 2.2 about anartificial intelligence experiment gone awry.[14] It was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist.[15]
In 1998, Powers wroteGain about a 150-year-old chemical company and a woman who lives near one of its plants and succumbs toovarian cancer. It won theJames Fenimore Cooper Prize for Best Historical Fiction in 1999.
HisPlowing the Dark (2000) tells of aSeattle research team building a groundbreakingvirtual reality while an American teacher is held hostage inBeirut. It receivedHarold D. Vursell Memorial Award from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.
Powers wroteThe Time of Our Singing in 2003. It is about the musician children of an interracial couple who met atMarian Anderson's famed 1939 concert on theLincoln Memorial steps.
Powers's ninth novel,The Echo Maker (2006), is about a Nebraska man who suffers head trauma in a truck accident and believes his caregiver sister is an impostor. It won a National Book Award[1][2] and was a finalist for thePulitzer Prize for Fiction.[16]
Powers's tenth novel,Generosity: An Enhancement (2009) has writing professor Russell Stone encountering his former student, Thassa, an Algerian woman whose constant happiness is exploited by journalists and scientists.
In 2014, Powers wroteOrfeo, about Peter Els, a retired music composition instructor and avant-garde composer who is mistaken for a bio-terrorist after being discovered with a makeshift genetics lab in his house.
The Overstory, published in April 2018, is about nine Americans whose unique life experiences with trees bring them together to address the destruction of forests. It won the 2019Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, was shortlisted for theBooker Prize[17] and the $75,0002019 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award,[18] and was runner-up for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize.[19]
Bewilderment, published in September 2021,[20] was shortlisted for the 2021Booker Prize[21] and longlisted for the National Book Award[22] andAndrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction.[23] It is described as "an astrobiologist thinks of a creative way to help his rare and troubled son in Richard Powers’ deeply moving and brilliantly original novel."[24]
Playground (2024), the 14th novel by Powers, was longlisted for the2024 Booker Prize.[25]
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